US faces one of biggest budget crunches in world – IMF

The world finally begins to realise that economic reality applies to the American Empire too, just like it applied to the Persian Empire, the Athenian Empire, the Roman Empire, the Spanish Empire, and the British Empire.

All of these previous empires were once seen as being omnipotent, omniscient, and irreplaceable. But where are they now?

(No points for working out what happened to these previous empires when their sinews of war began to outstrap even their seemingly infinite supplies of debased currency.)